You need to get one of these! They work very, very well.
I've heard about these for a few years, and I bought one as a gift this Christmas (Home Depot was smart to display them prominently). I cannot recommend this product highly enough.
For those who haven't heard about this, it is a rechargeable robot vacuum. You plug it in for a few hours to charge, then unplug it and let it loose. It goes randomly around the room vacuuming until its batttery dies (quite a while later). In that time it eventually covers the entire room, and parts of it more than once. It can even detect dirty spots and focus on them for a while. It also brushes baseboards. It has an amazing ability to work itself out of problem areas where it might get stuck, and it calls on the rare occassions when it really does get stuck. It can easily be contained in a room by blocking the doors, and it also comes with a laser beam "wall" that you can move around and which it will refuse to cross (you can also extras of these).
The great thing is that it works. We have not done a controlled test on this, but it definitely sucks up enough stuff to require emptying, and the carpets do look clean after it is done. And it is quieter than a regular vacuum. We have been vacuuming as much as we can since Christmas night - and we have tough floors ... a mix of wall-to-wall, tile with throw rugs, and hardwood.
I bought the Roomba Red, which is an entry level model. It is a great consumer friendly and idiot-proof product. Becuase of its bumper/sensor on the front It evokes nothing so much as a horseshoe crab (without the tail, and the connubial mess along the Jersey shore every April).
And, for the mathematically minded, the varied paths that the Roomba takes across the carpet leave really intriguing random patterns. I kid you not - one of use spent a good chunk of the 29th just watching it go ....
